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9/25/10

Unexpected honey harvest

Today Amy and I headed up to see how our hives (three mature, one new) are doing.

The first thing we noticed was how this hot weather makes the hives amazingly easy to take apart—all the propolis is softened, so you don't even need a hive tool to get the frames out. Plus, the bees are way too busy working and trying to stay cool to care about you taking their home apart a bit.

In the first two mature hives we were happy to find pretty much what we expected: lots and lots of brood surrounded by honey, and a few frames of mostly uncapped honey at the top.

In the third mature hive we found way more than we expected: plenty of brood surrounded by honey, and lots more honey to spare! This hive has been exceptionally busy over the last couple of months.

We took just a couple of frames, which we'll leave in the comb. It'll be showing up in small pieces on the cheese plate at Bar Covell in Los Feliz starting tonight.